ATTENTION

Feeds&Reads

I have recently taken on some exciting new projects, and created a new blog for myself. My new projects include a set of pilot projects exploring emerging technologies and their role in Youth Engagement for Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, and a new commission from FACT, Liverpool to co-create The Bold Street Project. With more wonderful Social Media projects in the pipeline, I am now focussing my blogging efforts on the new shiny www.katielips.com - a "propersonal" blog with a work focus. So apologies to any regular or irregular readers of this blog, but it's gonna get 'archived' and somewhat discontinued. I have loved writing and fiddling with this blog over the years but it's time to move on. So long "Katie's Blog"!

Upcoming's gone all grown up, well stuff's happened at least. I've been 'merged' again by Yahoo! which is still quite scary, but the nice folks at Upcoming are rewarding the oldskoolies by putting free teeshirts (US and Canada only) up for grabs. Amongst other things they've changing 'metros' to 'places', changed the domain to upcoming.yahoo.com but after the initial shock the interface is actually much nicer in my opinion, things seem to hang together a little better. I'm interested in seeing more on the mapping front, - perhaps this comes in superhandy when you're visiting a city you don't know, rather than hanging out in your home town. All good, now we just need more people using it to promote events here in Europe.

I found picnik yesterday. I love it. It's amazing and marvellous and totally rocks! It just does cool stuff to your photos, really well. picnik is a web based photo editing 'tool', you can instantly work on your pictures in a superbly easy interface. No need to even sign up to get started.

Pretty neat. It does all this with Flash, but it has the feeling of
being a true web app, with nice geeky features like scrollwheel
zooming. Amazing for anyone who wants to do nice things with pictures without hassle. Anyone can use this. It's great!

And the winner is... Marco! Marco won the Wii Tennis Tournament @ unDEAF last weekend - a deserving winner... A good time was had by all... We learned a lot about making a tournament, like having practice time, and a second round of playoffs for the amateurs who got knocked out. The artists at unDEAF seemed to like it though, we hope! Maybe next time we need better prizes?

A while ago I decided I'd love to attend unDEAF in Rotterdam. Organised by Rui Guerra with help also from my Friend Marta Ruperez at FACT, it's sure to be a wonderful event. unDEAF is the satellite event - the unconference version of DEAF (the Dutch Electronic Art Festival). So apart from helping out a little with organisation / catering / tidying up I wanted to bring something fun to the party. The other day Paul suggested we take Wii Tennis to the artists. So there it is. It's "Wiimbledon" comes to Rotterdam / Keep fit at the unconference. We are hoping it will genuinely be a fun competition, part performance, part user meetup / wiilovers' social. Bring your Mii for Wii Tennis fun! 4pm (or thereabouts, Saturday 14th April). All info here on Upcoming.

I like a good ringtone story, OK, call me a little sad. Currently with 2241 diggs is the tale of the iPhone ringtone on Gizmodo. It does actually 'sound like holy angels tinkling'! A wonderful Mac geek has taken the original from the keynote, cleaned it up from significant background noise and shared it with Gizmodo (and iPhone) fans.

Perhaps this is taking the fandom a little too seriously, when a ringtone becomes a cult tone before it's actually launched, but well, it is pretty catchy (only this morning I was thinking 'I know that sound" as I walked into the lounge and Paul's phone rang to he sound of iPhone). I also just found a nice poem someone has written, an ode to the iPhone ringtone! Personally I'm not taking fandom that far but as we have a ringtone sharing site to use, we thougt we'd help spread the illusion of having an iPhone when you actually have a rubbish old 'smart phone'.

Well now it's not only available as MIDI or MP3 download via the Gizmodo site, but on our own C21tones ringtone sharing site. C21tones lets you share 'your own original compositions' for free over the air download (if you don't have bluetooth). Get it OTA here: C21tones.com

(May not work on some USA CDMA networks; note Apple chose a GSM network for iPhone!)

Having been the proud owners of a Wii for about half a day and having racked up about one whole of hour of gameplay we had our first WiiAccident. I thought it would be Paul who would be first to fling the Wii across the table knocking over a wine glass, but no, it was me. Soon after we cleared up it was our favourite new Christmas baubles that copped it! We basically need a bigger house.

Ah how lovely, Christmas was all pretty and silly - we even went to watch the iceskaters in Museumplein on Christmas Eve. More 'obviouschristmasflickrpictures' are here. My favorite gift was the "Stiletto Radio" from my sister.

Tijs tagged me so here's 5 pointless things not many people know about me....

1. I don't know what to buy Paul for Christmas but I really want us to "rescue" a dog (not sure what from).
2. I used to play netball in the Bedfordshire county netball team.

3. I once 'babysat" for a girl called Samsara in a South London Housing Estate whose mother once looked after David Bowie's dog.

4. I'm not sure that "expat shops" are a good thing. Buying custard creams is not so appealing.

5. I used to have very long blonde hair extensions, wear a lot more eyeliner, and wear my underwear ontop of my outerwear (apparently). That was a long, long time ago.

And the hardest part of this is that other than Tijs, James, Robert & Boris who are already tagged I found it quite hard to find friends with blogs. I suppose this means I know some genuine non-geek people. (Apart from these lovely people: Katharina, Nadya,Andy,Michael, Sara). UPDATE: also tagging Breyten, who I should have tagged to begin with!)

Apparently it was the done thing in the seventies to read, take notice of and try out recipes to spice up Christmas in the "Good House Keeping Institute" Cookbook, and or magazine. So one year my Mother made Lemon Shorties for Christmas, perhaps mince pies alone seemed rather dull that year!

Since then Christmas isn't Christmas for me without Lemon Shorties - a sort of mince pie for people who hate mince pies. Replace the mincemeat concept with a delicious creamy sugary lemon filling and dust with icing.

As this year I'll be in Amsterdam for Christmas and am not going to see my Mum until January I didn't want to miss out on a Lemon Shortie or two so asked her to send me the recipe. She's now getting quite good at using her scanner but still she's not so hot on attaching files to emails (or finding where files are, or knowing how to reorder lists of sent items by date, or.. or...). So several fraught "the email disappeared" conversations later, here is the delightfully tatty recipe. Thanks Mum!

I've been posting less on this blog recently. A couple of reasons... I have been working on a hot new nightlife site here in Amsterdam which is launching soon, and also I have been channelling mobile posts to a new mobile blog.

The usual Amsterdam-at-night it is not. A blend of nature and art it is in the night garden, opening at Mediamatic tomorrow. "Night Garden, an exhibition in the form of a sub-technical INDOOR garden, is teeming with technology, art and food. Visitors can expect to be transformed into a cybernetic NOCTURNAL animal, build robots at a garden robot production studio, wander through a digital alter-garden, learn about air fluctuations, experience PSYCHO-chemical garden furniture and eat at a prototype restaurant serving more than 30 sorts of SPROUTED micro-greens."

After the first RoomWare event I put my pictures up on Flickr. The event was a success and it seems progressing behind the scenes. This is a totally cool project and I would love to be able to say more about it at this stage. In my opinion it looks set to attract some hot talent, development and funding wise.